Shauna Gordon-McKeon

Biography

Shauna Gordon-McKeon is an independent researcher and developer who focuses on free technologies and communities. She runs a business, Galaxy Rise Consulting, providing web and mobile development and data science services to individuals and organizations. She can often be found using her skills as a writer, public speaker, and teacher to help free software and open science communities more accessible to newcomers.

Open Source Bridge 2016

Sessions for this user

Money is a common worry, inside the open source community and out, but we often feel uncomfortable discussing it. We’ll talk about why that is and how our social norms around money impact who participates in open source and how they do so. The heart of this talk will be a series of case studies based on interviews with community members covering various economic models for open source, including worker co-ops, grant-funded and academic projects, for-profit business models, crowdfunding campaigns, and all-volunteer projects. We’ll explore the sustainability of each model as well as how they deal with the social pressures outlined in the first part of the talk.

Open Source Bridge 2015

Sessions for this user

How can Open Source Software projects attract minorities? Come to learn practical strategies to implement your diversity goals into actionable outreach efforts. We will describe ways to tap into minority STEM communities that exist both online and in meatspace. The former include Tweet chats and hashtags used by people of color who are enthusiasts of science (like #BLACKandSTEM) and tech (like #LATISM). The live events include annual conferences of minority students and professionals such as the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing.

Proposals for this user

Many open source software projects are interested in growing their user and contributor bases, but it can be hard to know where to start. This workshop will cover a number of steps projects can take to be more welcoming. Participants will work through a variety of structured, hands-on activities.

Open source software may be made of ones and zeroes, but open source communities are made of people. This talk is a whirlwind tour of what research psychology has to tell us about how individuals and groups learn, falter, and grow. The talk will emphasize "takeaways" - ways for you to use this research to improve your communities and your experiences in them.

Open Source Bridge 2014

Sessions for this user

Everyone wants to make contributing to open source projects more accessible and fun. But how do we do that? One way is to analyze past contributions to identify potential obstacles and opportunities for intervention and support. This workshop will use our own experiences as contributors to explore how the process works, using a simple but effective reflective activity.

Proposals for this user

In 2013, we ran a dozen open source outreach events at college campuses and reached hundreds of students, but for every event we ran there were more invitations we didn't have the resources to accept. In 2014, we're focused on scaling our workshops that so that community organizers everywhere can use our materials and welcome more people into open source. In this talk, we'll discuss what works and what doesn't when it comes to scaling community outreach.